New research has found that Pope Pius XII may have facilitated the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany shortly after Kristallnacht, the Daily Telegraph reports.

New research has found that Pope Pius XII may have arranged the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany just three weeks after Kristallnacht, the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The research is being carried out by Dr. Michael Hesemann, a German historian who is combing through the Vatican archives for the Pave the Way Foundation, a U.S.-based interfaith group.

Pope Pius XII has been widely criticized for his silence during the Holocaust and his failure to explicitly denounce the Holocaust, the Nazi regime or to excommunicate Hitler.

The new research, however, shows that the perception of Pius XII as "Hitler's Pope" may be historically incorrect.

Kristallnacht, known as "The Night of Broken Glass", took place on November 9-10, 1938. Ninety-one Jews in Germany and Austria were killed in anti-Jewish pogroms and tens of thousands were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Thousands of homes, buildings and synagogues were destroyed.

Hesemann said that Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli – the future Pius XII – wrote a letter on November 30, 1938, urging Catholic archbishops throughout the world to apply for visas for "non-Aryan Catholics" and Jewish converts to Christianity who wanted to flee Germany.

According to Hesemann, there is evidence that the visas would have been given to ordinary Jews and that the terms "converted Jews" and "non-Aryan Catholics" were a cover to prevent the Nazis from discovering the true purpose of the visas.

Elliot Hershberg, the chairman of the Pave the Way Foundation, was quoted in the Daily Telegraph report saying: “We believe that many Jews who were successful in leaving Europe may not have had any idea that their visas and travel documents were obtained through these Vatican efforts. Everything we have found thus far seems to indicate the known negative perception of Pope Pius XII is wrong.”

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How much is enough? He was responsible for saving an estimated 860,000,
which according to the stats "is a total larger than all other
Jewish relief organizations in Europe, combined, were able to
save."--Pinchas E. Lapide, (Former Israeli diplomat and now
Orthodox Jewish Rabbi ) --Three Popes and the Jews Keep in mind that
all efforts had to be conducted in secret in order to succeed. Had the
general public known anything about it, the Nazis would know too. The
Vatican would've been seized and countless more murdered. There are many
who had no idea that the Pope arranged their visas to safely emigrate
and escape the Nazis. Many Rabbis requested that he aid them covertly
and not make himself a target by making public anti-Nazi proclamations.
History shows that those who spoke out in public ended up dead, while
those planned in secret saved lives. Wasn't an act of cowardice to keep
a low profile. Not by any means. I

Try 860,000, and no it didn't happen via collaboration with the Nazis,
but via covert actions against them by secretly hiding them and
arranging visas for their emigration to countries that would safeguard
them. Pius most certainly DID speak out publicly against the Nazis. He
was advised by Rabbis to aid them quietly and not make the Vatican a
target by speaking out publicly. The fear was that the Nazis would seize
the Vatican. Had they done so, all the Jews he was hiding would have
been discovered and murdered.

Yes,I'm sure he did help transfer much more than 200 thousand,from
germany "to the East..." He also built bridges,the Brookling
bridge and the Golden Gate...The week after Brazil declared war against
Germany,the Brazilian Government arrested more than 300 catholic
priests,that were using the crosses on top of the churches all along the
coast as antenae for their short wave radios...and when the nazis were
loosing the war,pius Xll had an office in the vatican,run by cardinal
montini (that later became a pope himself),issueing passports for the ss
murderers to escape to all over the world,specialy to S.America...Ask
Gertrude Stein ,her sisters and her friends,how the pope helped...

My, my! The visceral hatred for Pius XII is white hot and does not even
consider there might be a different version than the one expressed here.
Pius XII has been prejudged and found wanting!! To hell with the evidence!

In fact priest had even their own 'priest block' in Dachau. There were
German, Austrian and more than any others Polish priests. The Nazis made
especially a whitch hunt on Polish Priests, since they had a lot of
influence and were withstanding the Nazis. They were almost completley
eleminated by the Nazis. In fact the catholic church did manage to make
reliefs to their conditions of living, something the Protestants and
others did not have. The catholics recieved a bit more food, which was
directly payed by the Vatican. Later many of them lost these privileges
again, which were not liked by the SS. Altogether there were more than
2.700 priests in Dachau and 1.034 of them died there. When Dachau was
freed in 1945, there were 1.040 priests, most of them catholic.

Stein was murdered after speaking out publicly. This is exactly why the
Rabbis begged Pius to keep a low profile and aid them covertly. The
threat of Nazis seizing the Vatican loomed, and had Pius remained more
publicly vocal, the Jews he was hiding would've perished, and Pius
would've died like Stein, another dead martyr instead of living to save
860,000.